Lesbian Visibility Week: Finding Our Space in Women’s Football

Lesbian Visibility Week is about being seen, celebrating who we are, how far we’ve come, and the lives we’ve built in spite of everything that tried to make us smaller. But visibility, for lesbians, has never been simple. It’s never just been about being seen, because the way we are seen has so often been shaped by people who were never trying to understand us in the first place.

I often find myself in circumstances that are quietly fighting for visibility, whether that’s my lesbianism, or the spaces I choose to exist within, with the most significant of those spaces, and the one that has shaped me the most, being women’s football. There is an almost unavoidable parallel between the lack of visibility for women in sport and the lack of visibility for queer women, both of which feel deeply rooted in the same systems of misogyny and the ideologies that grow from it, and yet so often, those underrepresented communities end up occupying the same spaces anyway, almost as if we are all, in different ways, trying to find somewhere we are allowed to be seen without having to ask for permission.

The word lesbian itself still feels complicated, not because of what it is, but because of what has been done to it. It has been over-sexualised, flattened, turned into something for other people - predominately male - consumption. It has been boxed into stereotypes that feel both outdated and somehow still everywhere at once, where femininity is questioned, masculinity is mocked, and anything in between is picked apart and labelled until it no longer feels like yours. 

Lesbophobia isn’t abstract, nor a distant issue, and the jokes it sits within are not harmless. It exists in a space where misogyny and lesbophobia overlap so seamlessly that it becomes difficult to separate one from the other. And for many of us, that’s the first version of the word, lesbian, that we meet. Not as an identity, but as an insult.

Photo Credit: Sophie Hurst

It’s thrown around in school corridors in the same way “you’re gay” always has been, attached to anything that sits even slightly outside of expectation. Too sporty, too uninterested in boys at an age where you’re apparently supposed to be, hair too short: ‘lesbian’. It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, because the point is never accuracy, it’s difference. 

That kind of language doesn’t just disappear when you leave those institutions it thrives in, but instead, it shapes the way you hear the word long before you ever consider using it for yourself. When that’s the environment you grow up in, it makes sense that the word lesbian can feel difficult to claim. 

So visibility isn’t just about seeing lesbians, it’s about changing what that word feels like when you hear it. For many of us, that didn’t come from media alone, it came from people and community.

People talk a lot about ‘gay awakenings’, those early moments of exposure where something shifts slightly and you realise you might not be who you thought you were. And as important I think that is in the queer journey, I also think there is a second awakening: the exposure to community. For me, and many of my fellow lesbians, that happened through women’s football.

Our Own Lesbian Architecture 

For queer women and non-binary people, space has always been limited in a way that doesn’t always get acknowledged. There’s an assumption that ‘queer spaces’ exist, that the rainbow flag on a door means something inside will automatically feel like it’s for you. Yet, in reality, many of those spaces are still dominated by cis men. They are often built around nightlife, around alcohol, around environments that don’t always feel accessible, or safe, or even welcoming.

And when spaces are created specifically for queer women, trans people, and non-binary communities, they are so rare that they become overwhelmed almost instantly. Take La Camionera - a lesbian bar in East London - where the small venue had well over 500 people show up for the opening. The demand is there in a way that’s impossible to ignore, we just don’t always have a place to go.

Women’s football fills a gap no one else seems to be addressing: a daytime, community-centred, emotionally safe queer space. Matchday isn’t just about football - it’s about belonging. You can be surrounded by people like you, cheer for players who are openly queer, and know you’re not alone.

It’s a totally different kind of experience from a bar or a club. It’s out in the open, daylight, not nighttime. You get to exist as your full self in hours outside dusk - something not all queer people get to do regularly. For many, going to a football match is the first time they’ve seen queer joy in public, not tucked away or hidden. 

Women’s football has always existed slightly outside of what is considered the norm. Women playing a sport so historically dominated by men has always been framed as something different, something “other”. But in that difference, something else was able to grow.

Queerness didn’t have to be inserted into women’s football, it was already there, in its walls. From the culture, to the players, to the community formed around it. And for those of us seeking belonging, that visibility mattered more than we can properly articulate. It wasn’t just about seeing players in relationships with women, although that in itself can be life-changing, it was about what that visibility created around it.

For me, it’s where my life exists most fully. Going to games with my girlfriend, with my friends, with people who share the same understanding of the world without needing it explained. It’s the complete lesbian experience - which, at times, can inevitably come back to bite you, because we all know how small the lesbian dating world is… And yet, above that, it feels more community centred - more home - than ever.

The L Word

Even within women’s football, the word lesbian isn’t always the one people choose. There are so many players who are openly in relationships with women, who live their lives visibly and honestly, and yet still opt for language that feels broader, and perhaps less loaded.

And that is a choice that makes sense. The scrutiny that comes with being a woman in football is already intense and heavy, and adding another layer to that, one that is so often misunderstood or misrepresented, is not something anyone should feel obligated to do. However when the word is used by a player, it carries an inevitable weight, because for those of us who spent years feeling uncomfortable with it, hearing it said by people you idolise can shift something.

There is still this idea that queerness is something that should be kept away from certain spaces, particularly from young people, as if visibility is something dangerous rather than something necessary. However, the stands at a women’s football match are full of young families, shoulder to shoulder to those who are queer; women’s football allows these things to co-exist without this ideology that it is harmful. It shows what happens when people are allowed to exist openly, it creates understanding, normality, acceptance in a way that no amount of distance ever could.

Photo Credit: LGBT Foundation

When I think of the word lesbian being used with pride, I think of Kerstin Casparij and Ffion Morgan.

Kerstin is the blueprint for advocacy that isn't passive. Whether she is kissing a trans flag wristband in defiance of exclusionary rulings or acting as a patron for the LGBT Foundation, she carries her identity with a weight that demands respect. Her words to DIVA Magazine stay with me: “If someone had told me that lesbians exist, it would have made my life a lot easier as a child.” Kerstin speaks on what is the core of why visibility matters. Her lived experience and exposure to lesbianism growing up is just like ours, yet she is contributing to ensure this doesn’t happen again. 

We also have Welsh International and West Ham’s Ffion Morgan, who uses her platform and YouTube vlogs to share her life with a normalcy that is radical. Not only does she do this, but she also openly speaks about her lesbianism, again with DIVA Magazine; “I never felt the need to come out,” Ffion says. “I’ve just been myself on social media and being a lesbian is part of that.” 

For those of us who didn’t grow up with that, who didn’t see ourselves reflected in everyday life, it changes the way we understand what is possible.

A Lesbian Fortress

My experience as a lesbian is entirely shaped by my life, my environment, and the people who have held me through it, but it is also shared in ways I didn’t expect, and in ways I don’t think I could have ever fully understood without finding this sport.

Women’s football gave me something I didn’t even realise I was looking for, or more importantly, that I needed; not just visibility, but a real, tangible sense of belonging and community. A space where my identity doesn’t feel like something that needs to be explained or defended, but something that simply exists alongside everything else that I am, without question.

And what makes that space feel real and intentional rather than accidental, is the fact that it is actively being built and protected. Clubs are not just passively benefiting from queer communities showing up, they are, at their best, listening, engaging, and trying to do better. I think about initiatives like the work being done at Arsenal Women, where efforts to improve fan experience have included direct conversations with LGBTQ+ supporters, not as a token gesture, but as a genuine attempt to understand what safety, inclusion, and community actually look like from the perspective of the people living through it.

For me, my lesbianism doesn’t exist separately from women’s football, it is deeply intertwined with it. The way I understand myself, the way I experience community, the way I have built relationships and found people who feel like home, all of it is rooted, in some way, in this space.

I also recognise that my experience of this hasn’t been universal, and that I move through this community with a certain level of privilege. Not everyone finds community in the same way, or feels as immediately welcomed or safe, and that matters.

Mine, and so many of our lesbian experiences aren't just rooted in the matches, it’s everything around them. The pre and post-game meet ups, group chats, watch parties, the smaller communities that exist within the larger one. It’s online platforms that extend space far beyond the in person ones.

So to anyone who is a lesbian, and is searching for something that feels like community, I would always say the same thing: come to a game. Not because it will fix everything, but because there is a whole community here that you might not realise exists until you’re in it. Women’s football has been the difference maker for me, and it might be for you too.